Why do you, like so many conservatives, forget the biggest influence of all? The Enlightenment.

Jews who live outside of Israel are not just smart, well-educated and cosmopolitan, but they are the least "God-fearing" of Westerners. Among them, Jews with PhDs are the least credulous people on the planet.

It's all because the experience of living among diverse cultures in large urban centers (coupled with an enormous respect for education) fuels creativity and doubt. Relative to them, Israeli Jews are flag-waving, unworldly people who prefer to live among their own kind, white Tel Aviv Jewish chic with white Tel Aviv Jewish chic, haredi with haredi, and so on.

But all Jews are changing in radical directions.Look at what happened in Israel. The descendants of Jews who for a millennium ridiculed Bar Kochba, have now turned him into a great role model. We are "losing Jews" in more ways than you may realize, Olterigo. Meanwhile, all of social science (political, social, economic, psychological and educational thought) has become substantially Judaized.

2012 world Gallup poll:

"Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person, or a convinced atheist?" This was the question posed to 51,927 people in 57 different countries, in a recent poll conducted by Gallup.

The results show the world's population is becoming less religious, with a nine percent decline in believers compared with a similar survey conducted in 2005. The new survey also found a 3 percent increase of people who consider themselves atheists. Altogether, 59 percent of the world's population defines itself today as religious, 23 percent as non-religious and 13 percent as atheist.

Of the religions surveyed in the poll, Jews were found to be the least religious: Only 38 percent of the Jewish population worldwide considers itself religious, while 54 sees itself as non-religious and 2 percent categorizes itself as atheist. In comparison, 97 percent of Buddhists, 83 percent of Protestant Christians and 74 percent of Muslims consider themselves religious.

The poll, titled "The Global Index of Religion and Atheism – 2012," was conducted in five continents, and did not include Israel. China leads the list of countries with the highest population of atheists – 47 percent, followed by Japan, the Czech Republic, France, South Korea and Germany. Topping the list of countries with the highest number of believers is Ghana (96 percent), followed by Nigeria, Armenia, Fiji, Macedonia, Romania and Iraq.

Last January, the Guttman-Avi Chai survey in Israel found that some 80 percent of Israeli Jews believe that God exists - the highest figure found since this review of Israeli-Jewish beliefs began two decades ago."

How many Israelis have been killed in the past five years by Hezbollah?
How many have been killed by Hamas over the same period?
How many have been killed by spillover from Middle Eastern instability?
What Egyptians clamor for war with a nuclear Israel? Which Jordanians?
What is the size and effectiveness of Iran's army?

I'm sorry, but I'm just not following you concerning tiny Israel. Hasn't tiny Israel managed to kill thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians over the past three decades without inviting any appreciable response from surrounding Middle Eastern states?

Like I say, I'm just not feeling it, Glenn.

In his words as much as his appearance, this guy is a complete doofus.

Speaking as a Jew, I'm ashamed at any publicity he might receive.

Not "Mr. Peace and Prosperity" but "Mr. Trust Me to Protect You from the Looming Demographic Threat".

"The [Israeli] Declaration of Independence depicts Israel as both Jewish and democratic. To stop democracy from wiping out the Jewish nature of our country we must ensure the Jewish majority". -- Benjamin Netanyahu, 2003, Herzliya conference on the Balance of Israel’s National Security

More and more of us liberal Jews are coming around to your way of thinking. Keep speaking out and ignore the downthumbs. You'e on the right side of history.

Seeking comments...

Part Two.

Another rejoinder holds that eventually, all countries must be held accountable to human rights standards, but that there is no standard answer to the question which should be held accountable first. This logic is reflected in an article published in the Chicago Tribune, in which Professor of Law George Bisharat criticized the argument that it is antisemitic to boycott Israel before other human rights abusers, writing "There has never been a "worst first" rule for boycotts. Activists urging divestment from apartheid South Africa were not racist because they failed to simultaneously condemn the demonstrably worse Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Nor were U.S. civil rights protesters required to inventory the world and only protest if our nation exceeded the abuses of others. Boycotts are justified whenever they are necessary and promise results."[227]
A third approach accuses those who invoke the "double-standards" argument of hypocrisy, noting that they invoke it only against critics of Israeli violence, not against critics of Palestinian violence.[228]
The Ad hominem argument claims that personal attacks of BDS supporters are logically irrelevant, because they focus on individuals' character, acts and/or motivation, rather than on the arguments for or against the BDS initiative in and of themselves.[225] This line of argumentation chimes with the words of University of California, Berkeley Professor of Sociology Claude S. Fischer, when he writes, "It is certainly true that anti-Semitism fuels the BDS movement. But most of the fuel — and the greatest problem for Western defenders of Israel — is the occupation, its settlements and the ugliness it often brings. That is why, for example, one of the powerful voices at the Berkeley BDS meeting for the proposal was that of an Israeli graduate student who had fought with the IDF in Lebanon. Fischer suggests that the right-wing Israeli "hard-core may stop up their ears, shut their eyes and yell 'anti-Semite' as loud as they can, but" they ought to listen to people who have legitimate criticisms of Israel and allow them into the mainstream conversation.[229]
Critique of an assumption implicit in the allegation, that being Jewish necessarily implies identification with the state of Israel. For example, Butler argues that the allegation of anti-Semitism springs necessarily from a false "generalizations about all Jews", presuming that "they all share the same political commitments" while ignoring a view prevalent among some Jews who were "exceedingly critical" of the state.[217] A similar line of reasoning was developed by Omar Barghouti, who claims that those who criticize BDS as an attack on all the Jewish people are equating the latter with state of Israel, a position "as absurd and bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self-defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, because of its horrific human rights record, would of necessity be Islamophobic".[230]

Seeking comments on the following wiki section containing BDS replies to criticism: I will post it in two parts.

Part One.

Replies to allegations
Several replies have been made to the allegations presented above:

Jay Michaelson wrote an editorial in The Jewish Daily Forward critical of Foxman's position. His editorial mentioned that several leaders of the BDS movement are themselves Jewish and state that the ADL, "with every pro-censorship stance it takes ... loses more and more credibility and cheapens the meaning of the term 'anti-Semitism' itself".[224]
Judith Butler wrote that BDS policy is to target the state of Israel and its institutions, rather than individuals for their citizenship, or their beliefs, though she admits "not all versions of BDS have been consistent on this point in the past".[217]
The human rights argument claims that BDS' demands are fully compatible with, and derived from, international standards for human rights. From this Judith Butler draws the conclusion that equating BDS with antisemitism amounts to the assertion, that those standards are antisemitic.[217]
The "double-standards" argument has seen several types of rejoinders.
One approach rejects the "double-standards" allegation, claiming that the situation in Israel is unique in some sense, different from other situations in which human rights violations are committed, and this uniqueness justifies boycotting Israel but not other countries. For example, some argue that Israel is one of the most highly subsidized American allies and that thanks to their unique political and historical relationships with Israel, Americans have a special responsibility to the status of human rights in that country.[63][225] Another reason for treating the Israeli case differently is that the call for boycott is the result of a unified effort by numerous civil societies whose members see themselves as the victims of Israeli human rights violations, and that such a unified effort is not paralleled in otherwise comparable political contexts today.[63][225] An example for this latter effect can be found in the words of scientist Stephen Hawking, explaining that his decision to withdraw from Israel's Presidential Conference was motivated by calls from Palestinian academics, who were unanimous in their conviction that he "should respect the boycott".[226]

Guys like can't be reasoned with and you know it. They even airbrushed Angela Merkel out of the wire photos showing her marching arm and arm with Francois Hollande through the streets of Paris.